Tentative trip plans

June 27th, 2011
DEPARTURE! YAY! Spend a week or two traveling the Olympia peninsula. There are so many beautiful places to visit and see right in our own backyard! This will also give us time to have last-minute visits with friends and family before we embark on a more extended leave.

Some places to cover here are:
The Hoh Rainforest
Port Townsend and surrounding
Crescent Lake
La Push Reservation
Victoria Island


Mid July, 2011
Here’s where we start to venture out of our comfort zone, though not too far since there are still some things to check out in the greater Washington state. Part of this will just be on-our-way visitation so I don’t think longer than a week will be spent doing this particular exploring.

We’re going to check out:
Leavenworth
Eastern Washington in general (I’ve never been there!)


End of July, 2011
Now we’re really getting interesting. We’re going to break into Idaho at this point and timelines are going to get fuzzy. After all, we have no end goal in sight so we can play most of this by ear and eye. We might just pass through the handle of Idaho, making our way into Montana for summer fun. We’ll make a pass back through the rest of Idaho later.

Here we’ll see:
Priest Lake
Silverwood Theme Park
Kanatsu National Park


Early August, 2011
So one of our first stops once we’re in Montana is going to be Missoula. We have talked at length about this being a potential place for permanent relocation after our traveling so I hope to spend some time checking out all it has to offer. There’s several National Forests and we’ll resist the urge to go straight to Yellowstone. It’d be best to get to the Dakotas before their cold weather starts.

Places to see:
Missoula
Lolo National Forest
Deerlodge National Forest
Helena National Forest
Lewis and Clark National Forest
Bozeman
Billings


Mid-August, 2011
I think we’ll press on through the Dakotas for the next two or three weeks. First traveling through North Dakota and then looping through South Dakota before swinging back around to finish off the summer at Yellowstone.

North Dakota will have:
Theodore Roosevelt National Park
Red Hills
Devil’s Lake
Dakota Dinosaur Museum
Scandinavian Heritage Park

In South Dakota we’ll see:
The Badlands
Mount Rushmore
The Corn Exchange restaurant
Crazy Horse Memorial
Custer State Park


Late August, 2011
It’s time for Yellowstone! There are many awesome places to see and stay in the park. Plenty of places to spend a lot of time in. We wanted to budget at least 2 weeks to see the entire park. We will also explore some other places in Wyoming as well.

Places to check out:
Grand Teton National Park
Yellowstone National Park


Mid September - February, 2012
Here we’ll have to start making a dive south in preparation for the winter months. We will of course take the scenic route. Not sure if we’ll be swinging through Southern Idaho and Oregon or go further south through Utah and Nevada. Driving down California, we’ll take the opportunity to visit my family which is scattered throughout. The winter will be a good time to travel through the southern states of Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico itself.